I follow a file of Shorthorns and Aberdeen Anguses led by their gauchos into the outdoor arena where the competition is in progress. Dressed in tweed coats and caps, the Argentine judges have the look of English country squires. The main judge today, though, is a towering Canadian made even taller by his outsize cowboy hat. (Local judges are bound to have friends or relatives among the livestock owners and perhaps display an unintended bias—thus the foreign arbiters.)
The near stands, the equivalent of box seats, are crowded with men in green loden overcoats and women swathed in furs. The most serious spectators are keeping score sheets—to remind themselves which animals they might wish to purchase later on. I find a seat several rows back and strike up a conversation with my neighbors—the manager of a Patagonian estancia and his friend, a Wyoming rancher wearing a Stetson. The Wyoming man, William (“Just call me Bill”) Bunce, director of agribusiness for his state, tells me he’s a frequent visitor to La Rural.
“Basically,” he explains, “the judges want balance and proportion in an animal. They look at the depth of the rib and the sturdiness of the body.” Bunce continues his commentary throughout the contest, stroking his walrus mustache as he fills in his score sheet. “They look at the structural soundness of the legs and feet and see if they carry the animal gracefully. And they look at the top-line level—they want that back pretty straight.”
Whenever a winning animal is announced, a roar of approval erupts in the stands. At one point, an older gaucho attendant, holding on to his champion bull’s harness, covers his eyes to hide tears of joy. Later, a victorious younger gaucho pumps his fist in the air.
I ask Bunce how La Rural compares to the livestock fair in Fort Worth, among the most important in the States. “You don’t draw these kinds of crowds there,” he says, “and you don’t get the high society you see here.”
I know what he means. The following day, I return to La Rural to eat at the fair’s most sumptuous restaurant, the Salon Central, with a high-society estanciero couple, Santiago Zuberbühler and his wife, Chita Mendez. Their estancia, Acelain (pronounced “ah-se-lah-een”), is arguably the finest in the country. Two hundred and fifty miles south of Buenos Aires, it was founded by Zuberbühler’s grandfather Enrique Larreta, in the early years of this century, when “rich as an Argentine” was a phrase that echoed in London, Paris, and New York.
Larreta, a lover of Andalucía, built the Acelain estancia house in Mozarabic style, blending touches of Granada’s Alhambra Palace with the fortress architecture of medieval Spain. And while all the great estancias are known for their parks, I’ve never come across any that exceed the beauty of Acelain’s.
As our meat arrives, Zuberbühler, a lean, agile man in his early 70s, tells me about the auctions of pedigree Aberdeen Anguses that were held at Acelain when he was a child. “After the auctions, our gauchos would put on displays of horsemanship and then 100 people or more would sit down on bales of hay and eat huge portions of meat grilled over open pits.”
“Back then,” says Mendez, “there were wealthy estancieros who spent most of their time in Paris but always made sure to be in Buenos Aires for La Rural.” In those days, this same Salon Central, with its chandeliers, velvet curtains, and gilt-framed paintings, was the setting for dinner parties and dances to celebrate the winners at La Rural and their eligible daughters.
“If you look at many of the estancieros who win prizes today, they aren’t the old family names,” Zuberbühler says. The social aspects of participating in La Rural are important to newcomers, he adds, but they take the breeding of champions just as seriously as the old families. When I scan the list of winners, I see that their names—Garciararena, Catto, Werthein, Sinclair, Blaquier—echo the ethnic mix of Spanish, Italian, British, Eastern European, and French that characterizes this country of constant immigration.
Over the years, I’ve often heard Argentines brag that their palates are so sensitive to beef they can distinguish the differences among the meat of the various breeds. Claudio Codina, owner with his grandfather of La Raya, perhaps Argentina’s finest restaurant, claims to have just such a discerning palate. Charolais, the big, white French breed, he tells me as we walk through La Rural on the last day of the fair, has a sweet-flavored, chewy meat. The humpbacked Brahmin varieties, on the other hand, have a lean, smooth meat almost devoid of the marbling that makes the best beef so flavorful. But, Codina concedes, “I certainly can’t tell the difference between the British breeds—Hereford, Shorthorn, Aberdeen Angus.” Those are the breeds Codina serves at La Raya. He shrugs: “Customers seem to like them best.”
La Raya is known for its customized portions, prepared according to instructions that the guests write down and then hand to the waiters. The restaurant is also known for its meat: Each of its cuts comes from a different butcher. “We don’t expect one steer to be able to provide the best steaks and ribs and entrails,” Codina says.
La Raya existed for more than a half century in an outlying district, but in 1995 it moved to the Palermo neighborhood, where many of its patrons reside. Its client list reads like a Who’s Who of Argentina: tango and film personalities, famous athletes, politicians, and business magnates. In addition to the food, the in-crowd appreciates that the tables are set widely apart and that a wall of mirrors allows them to glimpse other celebrities without having to crane their necks.
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